Happy New Year 2026!
Land sakes! Your old Granny is tired!
Here we are in a new year, and the last one ended in a whirl of activity. The last time we visited, Halloween was upon us. It was a magic time here in Squirrel Hollow with lots of fun and excitement. The kids had a ball. Let me tell you about it.
Everyone went out of their way to ensure that their houses were as creepily decorated as possible, and that treats of all sorts were plentiful for the trick or treaters. Before the night arrived, we heard that a school in an adjacent community was sponsoring a huge “Trunk or Treat” event and they went all out promoting it. That aggravated many of our town’s Halloween fans and we wondered what we could do to offset the draw of this event. Leave it to good old Uncle Oscar, caretaker at Witchwood Cemetery, to come through. After conferring with all the residents, it was decided to hold our first “Crypt or Treat” event ahead of our usual Monster Bash.
All of the crypts, tombs and graves at the cemetery were opened and decorated with all sorts of Halloween fare. The residents really got into it and offered up all kinds of ghoulish and ghastly treats for the visiting, costumed children. We held it starting at 8:30 PM, just after most kids finished terrorizing the neighborhood houses for treats. This allowed them time to visit the cemetery residents and still make it home at a decent hour in time for bed. At midnight, of course, the Monster Bash was held. The feedback was all positive and the kids had a blast, getting treats from the residents and trying to decide who had the scariest costumes, the corpses and decayed bodies or the kids. It was a graveyard smash!
Thanksgiving came and, after dinners with all the families, my great granddaughter, Grizelda, approached me saying her school was having a Christmas fundraiser to help needy families in Squirrel Hollow and surrounding communities. She was out soliciting donations for items to be rummaged off the week before Christmas. She wondered if I would be able to come up with enough of my homemade Witch’s Brew to help her out. I said sure, and asked how much. She said 400 gallons would probably be enough.
When I came to, I asked her if she was certain she needed that much. She said my Brew was known far and wide and was sure to be a bestseller. I told her I would have to get started right away and it would require me working practically day and night. She said she would help. I said OK.
Needless to say, we met the deadline and I was worn out. However, we were able to raise enough money to provide a nice Christmas dinner and toys to one hundred of the most needy families. They were grateful, our community felt good, and the true spirit of giving was nurtured. It was a magnificent Christmas in Squirrel Hollow.
I recovered just enough to see in the New Year with family and friends. We toasted each others’ health and wished for untold blessings to be ours in the coming year.
When things settled down and returned to normal, I began to think of all the blessings 2025 had brought and pondered what new opportunities would arise in 2026. It was then I realized that I had neglected my articles to Zombos’ Closet! I was mortified! It was hard to shift mental gears from holiday activities to radio spots. What would I do?
I fretted and worried. I called up Zombos’ Closet on the computer and, lo and behold, there was my answer. Zombos had featured a pressbook to Dawn of the Dead (1978), courtesy of It Came From Hollywood. That was it! I could offer a great tie-in!
I called The Radio Reaper and he said he had the spots and I could use them. I quickly watched the movie to refresh my memory. It was the second of George A. Romero’s zombie “Dead” trilogy, the first being the great Night of the Living Dead (1968), and the third one, Day of the Dead (1985).
Dawn of the Dead was the most profitable of the three movies. Some of it I liked, some of it I didn’t. It definitely is a 70’s movie and it shows, from the fashions to the hairstyles, the facial hair and the characterizations. It opens on a note of chaos as employees of a TV station argue over responsibilities of alerting the public to open shelters and those who see those alerts as death sentences, wanting people to stay home and not venture out. Society is collapsing and people don’t know what to do. The zombie apocalypse is now worldwide with urban centers falling and panic ensuing. Millions of zombies have taken over. The movie follows four people who steal the TV helicopter and flee the city. They take shelter in a deserted shopping mall and create a life such as it is, fending off zombies at every turn and a renegade biker gang who shows up at the end to wreck their peaceful existence.
The movie lacks the charm of the first. Being in color, the film capitalizes on the use of bright red blood. The zombie makeup is glaring– a bright bluish, greenish gray color which doesn’t really look ghastly enough, but serves to tell who is a zombie and who isn’t. Latex prosthetics and more gruesome makeup is reserved for prominent zombies. Because of the sheer numbers of zombies on camera, the makeup crew had to come up with a simple way of making up the zombie force, thus the basic death color. All in all the zombies are too well dressed and too clean.
There are some interesting scenarios played out as the four survivors carve an existence in the mall which furnishes them with all the food, guns, ammo and essentials they need. They treat themselves to new clothes, watches and accessories, and all the money they could ever want, soon realizing the folly of it all. The horror element is not played up as much as the drive for survival. The movie is long…126 minutes in the version I watched.
This movie probably played better in 1978. Today, we are more accustomed to zombie lore and graphic effects, as presented by the excellent series The Walking Dead. In 1978, a lot of the zombie ethos was still new. Some of the zombie feasting scenes were likely gag-inducing back then but today, when I watched the scene of the zombies pulling out the small intestines of one of the bikers and feeding on them, all I could say was, “Cool! I wonder how they did that?”
Here are the radio spots. They are pretty good. As the pressbook says, they are to be rotated and checked prior to use because some are tagged for use before the film opens and others are for after the film opens. So listen! They will take a bite out of you!